Response to Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried"

  Tim O’Brien’s story “On The Rainy River”, was not at all what I was expecting when I began to read it.  After the first few paragraphs I though it would tell of a young man who didn’t want to go to war for fear of dying, which I think is a good reason not to want to go to war.  Yes, this was part of Tim O’Brien’s reason for not wanting to go to war, but it was more of a personal conflict of staying true to his own personal convictions.  O’Brien did not believe the war he would be sent off to was for worthy causes.  He did not agree with the reasons for the war.  Therefore, his fight was to decide whether he would remain true to his beliefs and run from the war or if he would give in and fight a war he didn’t agree with in order to forego personal humiliation.

    Tim O’Brien drove off to the Rainy River in" a haze of confusion and fear.  When he arrived at the cabins he stayed in for 6 days, he was greeted by an elderly man named Elroy, who O’Brien says saved his life.  Not in the literal sense, but O’Brien was going to leave everything behind and run away.  Elroy was a man who never pressured or pushed at Tim to tell him why he was there and so obviously distraught.  Elroy was just there really, he didn’t actually do anything for Tim.  But maybe that is exactly what he did for Tim, nothing, he just let him be.
    In the end Tim makes the decision to go home and fight that war.  He felt like a coward for doing so because he didn’t believe in the fight.  I think this made him the exact opposite.  Sometimes doing the right thing is what hurts the most and feels the most wrong, but is for the right reason, because it is right.  That is exactly what war is.  Doing the things that hurt you the most, killing people, injuring people, even if it is for self preservation, it still hurts and it feels wrong, and yet it is right.  This man, Tim O’Brien was at war before he even got there.  He went to war the day he received that enlistment letter in the mail.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JNGwiYwRtk

Photo Cited 25 Sep 2010
http://ronaldarichardson.com/2008/01/30/the-things-they-carried/

Video Cited 25 Sept 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JNGwiYwRtk
You Tube


 

Sean Huze's "The Sand Storm"

    Sean Huze’s, “The Sandstorm” is a play written about the Iraqi war.  In it, men from the military talk about their time in Iraq.  These stories are very raw and you can easily sense the pain these men have gone through and for many, are still going through.  They speak of the soldiers they lost and the things they did.  One of the men, Sgt Damond, tells of the time he was stationed outside of Al Kut doing traffic control, you know, checking vehicles for weapons and things like that.  He’d been up for at least 30 hours with around 2 hours sleep prior to that. Sgt Damond said the days ran together, the heat didn’t help matters, and he was sick of doing traffic stops.  It had all he could take just when one of his privates was having trouble with some Iraqi men he was trying to search.  While the private was searching one of the men, the private tossed a wad of the mans money to the ground.  The Iraqi man bent to pick it up and pushed the private away when he tried to make the man stand up.  That’s when Sgt Damond kicked the man in his face, knocking him straight to the ground.  And he continued to beat the crap out of the man, he didn’t notice his private was doing the same to another man.  Sgt Damond knew he’d completely lost control of the situation and had just beat a man with no justifiable reason.  Sgt Damond knew it was completely wrong, and yet he felt nothing as he looked down at his victim.
    There are other similar stories and then of one from PFC Weems who’d found a foot after an explosion and tried to find the Iraqi man it had belonged to because it seemed like the right thing to do.
    One of stories I liked most was that of a platoon dispatched to protect a small community from looters.  These Iraqi people in the community were outrageously kind to the soldiers.  They cooked for them out of gratitude, kept water in their refrigerators for the soldiers to have cold water, and refused any money from the soldiers when they tried to give it.  These people were grateful to the soldiers, even in the wake of watching us blow up parts of their town.  They understood why it was done, held no grudges, and even seemed to agree with it.  Like they didn’t like the way their country was run, or ruled rather, either.  The people in this town put the humanity back in these soldiers who had come to feel little to nothing in the wake of death and destruction.
    At one point in the play, one of the soldiers says that when they come home there’s an unspoken code that you don’t talk about the things that happened when you were at war.  I see the truth in this.  Any soldier I’ve ever met, never talks about what happened over there or the things he/she did.  I think there should be more plays like Sean Huze’s.   Perhaps people in America should  know what the men and women who defend this country must endure so that things like 9/11 don’t happen again.  Perhaps then, just maybe, that mosque in New York, at the sight of the world trade center, wouldn’t have even the slightest chance of being built.  Maybe then people could see it as a complete travesty.


 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKFtNEM23d8

My Response to 2 Poems

In this assignment I was asked to give my response to two poems of my choosing. The poems I have chosen are: Photograph from 911, by Wistawa Szymborska, and Song of Napalm, by Bruce Weigl. Out of the list of given poems, these were the two which stirred the most emotion in me, which is one of the factors in poetry I enjoy.
“They jumped from the burning floors-” (1).
When I read this first line of Szymborska’s poem, my mind immediately reverted to the day of 911 and the footage I saw of just that. This poem is a remarkable depiction of 911 in my opinion. I have not seen the actual picture the author speaks of, but I can see it in my minds eye as clearly as the day it happened. Szymborska describes how the victims of 911 who jumped from the burning towers are forever frozen in air because of the picture and how they are still physically unharmed.
There’s enough time
for hair to come loose,
for keys and coins
to fall from pockets” (7-10).
These lines describe the fact that this fall was faster than burning to death, but long enough that it would still have been torture for the victims. The descent is quick enough to avoid a slow, painful death, but long enough to be unable to escape a fearful death.
Songs of Napalm was written for the authors wife, in an attempt to help her understand what has come home with him from war. Weigl describes a innocent evening of watching the pasture with his wife after a storm. However, what seams innocent is not at all, no matter how intensely Weigl may want it to be so.
And not your good love and not the rain-swept air
and not the jungle green
Pasture unfolding before us can deny it.” (43-45)
is evident to this. This is a poem of a tortured veteran who wants to be able to have an evening of watching horses graze in the pasture as the sky’s clear from its earlier showers while in the company of his lover, only to be reminded of the worst days of his life. I think Weigl is describing how such an innocent and irrelevant scene can be so dramatically altered into one of horror and misery.
So I can keep on living,
so I can stay here beside you,
I try to imagine she runs down the road and wings
beat inside her until she rises (28-31)
is the author trying to make the best of what his mind shows him. He’s not saying he will die if he does not imagine it this way. He is doing so to maintain his sanity so that he may stay with his wife and not in a tight, white coat.
These two poems engulfed my attention so much that as I read the remaining poems, I was unable to fully concentrate on them as I was still evaluating Photograph pf 911 and Song of Napalm. When I read them a second time, my eyes welled with tears. Upon reading them aloud the tears actually fell. This is why I chose these poems, they touched something in me and made me appreciate my life and what I am fortunate enough to have.




Here is a link: http://barenakedislam.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/911-jumpers-from-hell/


Works Cited
Szymborska, Wislawa. "Photograph from 911" from Monologue of a Dog. 2005. 6 Sep. 2010

Weigl, Bruce. "Songs of Napalm" from Archaeology of the Circle: New and Selected Poems.
1999. 6 Sep. 2010